An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series A pot of beans sits on the stove in late March. They’ve been soaking since morning. There’s cornmeal in the bin and a heel of fatback left from winter slaughter, but not much else. The cellar shelves have thinned. The last jars of green beans are already spoken…
An installment in our Appalachian History & Culture series A weather report for Galax, VA, might call for scattered showers, but drive a few miles toward Pipers Gap or down into a Carroll County hollow and you’ll see how quickly that forecast unravels. One ridge catches the rain. The next stays dry. Along the Blue Ridge escarpment in Patrick County, a…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series You drive west on a two-lane highway where the white lines are faded and the shoulder is narrow. The road bends with the land instead of cutting through it. A brick post office sits near a four-way stop. A hardware store with a gravel lot holds a row of pickup trucks. The storefronts are modest. The…
An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series The first thing you notice is the crunch. A good mountain apple doesn’t yield much when you bite into it. There’s a sharp crack as the skin breaks, followed by dense flesh that holds its shape under pressure. Juice comes after, not before. The apple doesn’t collapse or turn soft…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. The sheriff knew where the trouble was coming from before anyone notified him. Raised voices carried down a company road cut into the hillside. A family was loading what they could onto a wagon. A company foreman stood to the side, arms folded, eyeing them closely. Two armed…
An installment in our Appalachian History & Culture series The body lay in the front room, washed and laid out, the clock stopped. Folks came and went through the day and into the night, chairs pulled close to the walls to make space. Someone moved quietly between rooms with a tray of funeral biscuits, pressing…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series Before anyone saw the train, they heard it. A whistle drifted up the valley, followed by the steady effort of a steam engine pulling against the grade. In cold mountain air, sound carried farther than you might expect. The Creeper let people know it was coming long before it…
An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series Before freezers reached mountain kitchens, canning sausage was a practical response to a stubborn reality. Ground meat didn’t keep the way whole cuts did. Once a hog was broken down, sausage became the most vulnerable part of the work. Families knew from experience that if it wasn’t handled…
An installment in our Appalachian History & Culture series If you grew up around Appalachian households, you probably learned early that belief didn’t need an audience. It didn’t announce itself or ask for an explanation. What we now call Appalachian faith and folk practice showed up in how the home was arranged, in what sat…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. You’re sitting at the table with a box of old photos. Some are loose. Some are stuck together. A few have curled at the corners. You recognize faces, but not always names. You know they’re family, but you can’t always say how. You turn one over,…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. Scroll through enough social posts, and you’ll see the same Appalachian stereotypes repeated: Poor. Backward. Uneducated. Stuck. The wording shifts, but the judgment stays the same. It’s often delivered with confidence and very little curiosity. Yes, hardship was real. Poverty was real. Options were limited. Work was hard,…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. The phrase “catching a song” once had a literal meaning in the Southern Appalachians. A singer shared a tune, someone else listened closely, and the melody passed from one memory to another. Nothing was written down. The old songs stayed alive only as long as someone could remember…